The author we have just quoted goes on to say--"Mr. Walker, in ridiculing the practice of wearing stays, has chosen a very homely and not very correct illustration of the human figure. 'The uppermost pair of ribs,' says he, 'which lie just at the bottom of the neck, are very short. The next pair are rather longer, the third longer still, and thus they go on increasing in length to the seventh pair, or last true ribs, after which the length diminishes, but without materially contracting the size of the cavity, because the false ribs only go round a part of the body. Hence the chest has a sort of conical shape, or it may be compared to a common beehive, the narrow pointed end being next the neck, and the broad end undermost; the natural form of the chest, in short, is just the reverse of the fashionable shape of the waist; the latter is narrow below and wide above, the former is narrow above and wide below.' Surely, when the idea struck him, he must have been gazing on a living skeleton, uncovered with muscle. After reading his observations, I took the measure of a well-formed little girl, seven years of age, who had never worn stays, and found the circumference of the bust just below the shoulders one inch and a-half larger than at the lower part of the waist." The views of the author just quoted seem to be borne out by the researches of a French physician of high standing who has paid much attention to the subject. He positively asserts that "_Corsets cannot be charged with causing deviation of the vertebral column_."
After the period referred to by Buchan's son, when tight-lacing was so rigorously revived, we see no diminution of it, and towards the end of George III.'s reign, gentlemen, as well as ladies, availed themselves of the assistance of the corset-maker. Advertising tailors of the time freely advertised their "Codrington corsets" and "Petersham stiffners" for gentlemen of fashion, much as the "Alexandra corset," or "the Empress's own stay," is brought to the notice of the public at the present day. Soemmering informs us that as long ago as 1760, "It was the fashion in Berlin, and also in Holland a few years before, to apply corsets to children, and many families might be named in which parental fondness selected the handsomest of several boys to put in corsets." In France, Russia, Austria, and Germany, this practice has been decidedly on the increase since that time, and lads intended for the army are treated much after the manner of young ladies, and are almost as tightly laced. It is related of Prince de Ligne and Prince Kaunitz that they were invariably incased in most expensively-made satin corsets, the former wearing black and the latter white. Dr. Doran, in writing of the officers of the far-famed "Lion of the North," Gustavus Adolphus, says, "They were the tightest-laced exquisites of suffering humanity." The worthy doctor, like many others who have written on the subject, inseparably associates the habitual wearing of corsets with extreme suffering; but the gentlemen who, like the ladies, have been subjected to the full discipline of the corset, not only emphatically deny that it has caused them any injury, and, beyond the inconvenience experienced on adopting any new article of attire, little uneasiness, but, on the contrary, maintain that the sensations associated with the confirmed practice of tight-lacing are so agreeable that those who are once addicted to it rarely abandon the practice. The following letter to the _Englishwoman's Magazine_ of November, 1867, from a gentleman who was educated in Vienna, will show this:--